The Prisoner

    When one has watched ‘the Prisoner’ on and off for 50 years, contemplated what it’s all supposed to be about, thought, theorized, supposed, surmised. Discussed, debated, placed interpretation upon. Put your ideas down on paper, perhaps have written a thesis, a monograph, or essay on the subject of ‘the Prisoner’ and you still have no idea what it’s about..... Because let’s face it there’s so much to ‘the Prisoner,’ so many different levels, so many ways to go, and avenues to explore that ‘the Prisoner’ means what it is, whatever that is. And if we don’t know what that it, there’s only one thing to do begin at the beginning....cue dark clouds, thunder, cue music, action. Dark clouds and thunder means there’s a storm brewing. The sound of an aircraft, a runway suggests there’s an airport nearby. The chap in the Lotus 7, where had he come from, somewhere abroad perhaps. Or maybe he’s had a call to make in the country, the Colonel’s residence perhaps. Now he’s got a call to make in town, the opposite to how it was in ‘Many Happy Returns,’ but to the same office, the same bureaucrat sat behind that same desk. There’s more thunder, the man shouting the odds, an envelope marked private and delivered by hand and a fist slammed down on the desk to emphasize it, upsetting the cup and saucer on the tea plate in the process. We assume it’s a letter of resignation, but really is there any evidence for that? But no, the man had resigned. He went home, two suitcases already packed. He collects his passport, and an airline ticket, but just a minute, the room’s going round, the skyscrapers and blackness. Before we know where we are we’re involved again and back in The Village! Now this time concentrate, it’s only a television series, it’s not rocket science, although that will become involved later in the series, it shouldn’t be that difficult to understand what it’s all about….should it?

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